


Brought to Bear

by Silmerion



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, Children, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Immediately post-V6E7, Kids Are Scary, Motherhood, Parenthood, Touchy-Feely Weiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 13:09:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17366453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silmerion/pseuds/Silmerion
Summary: Weiss and Blake talk kids. But talking kids means talking parents, and parents are a sensitive subject for both of them.





	Brought to Bear

“Adrian is cute,” Blake said, as they lay in bed that night.

Blake watched Weiss’s reaction closely. Her girlfriend rolled onto her side, locked eyes with Blake, pale moonlight pooling in her wide eyes as she shook in agreement. Her hand squeezed Blake’s tightly, an unusually vulnerable touch even among Weiss’s new tactile vocabulary.  If she noticed Blake’s evaluating set, she didn’t let on. “He is _so adorable_ ,” Weiss affirmed. “Such a precious little child. Isn’t it incredible how much he looks like Jaune? I mean obviously he gets a lot from Terra too - and he’s got too much baby fat to make out the cheekbones or the jawline just yet - but he is so. Obviously. An Arc! Babies are-” Weiss hiccuped then, as if catching her toe while sprinting. “Babies are incredible,” she whispered to the pillow.

Blake only stroked Weiss’s cheek in reply, returning her girlfriend’s smile more softly. “They really are,” she agreed. “Did it surprise you, how much I look like my parents?”

Weiss hummed at that, propping her head up on one arm as she considered. “I was surprised, yes,” she said, “but more that your _parents_ look so alike. Surely black cats don’t always go for the same?”

“Obviously not, you goof,” Blake laughed, poking her tease of a girlfriend in the nose; the ex-heiress didn’t even pretend to be indignant, dispensing a laugh like Blake had inserted a quarter. “And hey, your parents look pretty similar too.”

“Please,” Weiss scoffed. “I’ve seen photos of Father from his youth. His resemblance to the Schnee patriarchs is entirely an affect. That all three of his children came out like Mother is…well. I try to chalk it up to good fortune.”

Blake nodded sagely. “Schnee blood is strong,” she declared in a labored baritone.

Weiss’s answering slap of Blake’s arm held no threat and hardly any force. “Ass,” she pouted. Then she lifted Blake’s arm, as if opening a door, and plopped herself right in. They were dizzyingly close. As the faunus laughed she could feel her chest bounce against Weiss. Blake had needed this.

The closeness brought the next question easier. She asked, “Would you like kids, Weiss? Someday, when all this is over?”

Weiss’s pulse spiked as soon as the question began, and it refused to settle despite the deadly stillness. Her girlfriend held a long rest against her, only staccato heartbeats and pianissimo breaths carrying the tune. Just as Blake was drafting an apology, Weiss spoke. “I don’t think I’d be a very good mother.”

Once upon a time, Weiss writing herself off as awful at something would have been unheard of, the kind of thing you started a rumor about if you wanted to get upbraided in the hallway after class. The Blake of a lifetime ago would have never let her hear the end of it.  “You’d be amazing, Weiss,” she said. “Why would you think otherwise?”

Weiss snorted in raucous rebuff. “I refuse to be to any child what my parents have been to me.”

Now this was familiar territory. Weiss wanted you to believe she could transmute insecurity into resolution, and she could persuade you to, if you let her. But Blake had come under the same spell in reverse too many times. On short missions and long study nights, in every preemptive lash of the heiress’s tongue, Blake had seen her own life in negative. She retorted, “That’s not an answer, Weiss, that’s a fear. An irrational one, by the way, and I think you know it.” Coarse words borne by an itchy tongue. She wound up, expecting a fight.

She never got it. Weiss slumped deeper into Blake’s bosom, knees drawing up against Blake’s thighs. “I really don’t. We’ve talked about how things were growing up. Even Winter barely touched me. How long did it take for me to learn to cuddle?” Weiss whimpered, cuddling yet closer to Blake. She seemed delirious for contact even as her voice recoiled.

“Less time than you remember,” Blake asserted.

“But more than you wanted,” Blake heard from somewhere in her pajamas.

That had been an evening to remember, Blake thought sardonically. She could still see Yang’s pitying stare as she hauled Ruby to the library, out of harm’s way. “Look, that fight was my insecurity speaking. I was scared then, too, Weiss, just...of something else. The opposite of what you were, maybe.”

“I was scared of you leaving me if I overstepped.”

“So was I.”

“Hah.” Weiss’s dry laugh dropped like a stone. “You were ridiculous, is what you were.”

“Listen.” Weiss had a point, of course, if only she would receive it herself. “You _learned_ , you got in touch with that part of yourself and you’ve never stopped. We’re not doomed to repeat our parents’ mistakes.”

It was a guilty thing for Blake to claim. She recalled, abruptly, another fight, the day she’d cast off the weights that were Kali and Ghira, when she’d told them much the same. But it was what Weiss needed right now.

“Easy for you to say,” Weiss retorted. “Your parents hugged you growing up.”

Ah. “Petty,” clipped Blake.

Weiss seemed to want to meld into Blake’s skin. “Gods, yes, that was small of me. I’m being so gross right now. I’m sorry.”

“Weiss, _look_ _at me_.” The sorrow in her own voice caught Blake off-guard. Weiss responded to it instantly, reeling away to meet Blake’s exasperated gaze. “Kali and Ghira are...honestly, they’re picture-perfect parents. You’re right, small or not. But they’re not the only people who raised me.” Weiss looked rueful, and Blake allowed a pause to eat up the space between them while she debated saying anything further. When she began again she could only muster a little volume. “And it scares me too, sometimes, thinking it might have ruined me. I don’t want to do that to anyone else either. I don’t want to hold on to anyone so firmly. But it was all I knew for so long that, that-”

Weiss exploded. “Blake baby no, of _course_ you won’t, you’re not like Adam and you never have-” She stopped short as Blake pressed her index finger to her lips. The faunus met Weiss’s bemused stare with a cocked eyebrow. “Ah,” Weiss relented after a moment. She looked away, abashed. “Play-acting to make a point. Very clever. The tears were a nice touch.”

Blake shook her head. “No, that was all real, Weiss. But I’m not about to run away from children because I might make mistakes.” Try as she might, the tremors still tore her tone. “You don’t have to be comfortable with having kids _right now_. Who knows how long we’ll be out here playing hero. Just...if some part of your gut is telling you you’d want them, don’t quash that part yet? For me?”

Weiss said nothing. Instead she pushed herself into Blake again, who acquiesced, rolling onto her back. Weiss splayed across the faunus, ear to Blake’s sternum, eyes glaring to the side, arms roving and fingers dancing, as if she were pacing in thought.

“Okay,” Weiss finally granted. “Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Not a great couple months for my confidence, but Weiss cooing at Adrian was too adorable to pass up. Plus, it looks like canon Bumbleby might _actually_ happen this season, and I wanted to get a Monochrome piece out before it does.


End file.
